First singer Macy Gray came for the flag, now actress Roseanna Arquette is coming after fireworks.
The star, whose most recent role was on Netflix’s critically-acclaimed Ratched, tweeted about her opposition to fireworks over the July 4th holiday, saying, “I love fireworks but boy do they pollute the atmosphere and cause anxiety with the noise in some. At some point we are going to have to give up some things for the well-being of Mother Earth and humans to survive.”
Arquette may have been taking her cues from legacy media outlets, who have been reporting on particular concerns about the environmental impact of fireworks this year. On July 2, for example, National Geographic ran an extensive story on a study which argues that the Independence Day tradition “disproportionately [exposes]…communities of color to air pollution.”
Nat Geo reports:
“The authors also showed that fireworks smoke may be creating an additional—albeit short term—health risk for communities already disproportionately burdened by air pollution: Urban ones with higher rates of asthma, more older residents, and a greater percentage of children under 10. These areas also tended to have more Black and Hispanic residents than those with less Fourth of July air pollution.
The high-risk communities identified in the study have “perpetual exposure to hazardous environmental toxins,” says Aisha Dickerson, an environmental epidemiologist at Johns Hopkins University who wasn’t involved with the paper. “This aggravates an already prevalent and persistent issue.”
NPR aired a similar story on July 1, arguing that climate change has made firework use untenable.
Arquette may have tied her reasoning for jettisoning fireworks to environmentalism, but in the recent past, the 61-year-old left-wing activist has made it clear she has little use for patriotic celebrations in general.
On June 29 she said she plans to kneel during the national anthem in perpetuity, tweeting: “I don’t know about you but if the flag and star spangled banner comes around me I kneel in solidarity and will for the rest of my life.” And in 2019 she said she posted a picture of herself giving the peace sign alongside the caption, “I’ll never stand for the flag again.”
Arquette is known for blasting controversial takes to her more than 193,000 followers. As the Daily Wire reported, last year, she implied that a Jewish conspiracy may be somehow responsible for the coronavirus, saying, “I’m still confused, so Israel has been working on a corona virus vaccine for a year already ? (so they knew )Vaccines take a long time to know if they are safe and KUSHNER OSCAR is the major investor in the new vaccine that is supposedly coming here. lives at risk for profit.”
The actress has also decried her own ethnicity, saying in 2019, “I’m sorry I was born white and privileged. It disgusts me. And I feel so much shame.” Only a few hours earlier, she said of former President Trump, “The president of the United States of America incites racist violence . The end.”